Our aquaforest cube

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Hello wamas, I haven't been on much but figured I would post our current system. I have wanted to share our system and particularly my sps tank for a bit so I hope you enjoy it. I set this tank up exactly how I like to keep a system and it isn't exactly how everyone does it but rather how I like it. High flow, high light, lots of fish and lots of food. I will start with info and post pictures later. The tank is in the reef central sps forum with images if you can't wait. Below is hopefully all the info on my tank.

By the way I don't know why the * marks came up when I cut and pasted this from my reef central thread so just ignore them.

 

 

- Display tank -

The display tank is a marineland 3' cube and is 24" high if I remember.* It's Starfire glass and is visible from three sides right now.* The rock work is raised from the bottom using an acrylic base and a few PVC pipes.* This really give a lot of places for the load of fish to hide and swim through. This tank is barebottom and we use high flow to keep the corals hopefully growing naturally.* I do not like skinny long branches especially when growing crooked because of inadequate or flow moving in one direction.

There are maybe 40 fish in the display now if I had to guess.* One day I will get a list from my wife who is the fish expert.*

 

- Flow -

1 mp60qd on about half power

3 mp40qd on reef rest at full power

One small jebo in the back bottom where the flow is low and detritus settles.* This helps keep the detritus from becoming a nutrient problem and lets the animals, bacteria, sponge, ect down there use what does collect as housing.* There are pieces of coral that broke off growing in it so I will leave it be. I think having varied high flow in all directions is a big key to healthy acropora.

 

- Other tanks -

The system also contains a couple other tanks which include...

3' by 2' by 18" zoanthid tank*

8' by 18" by 12" frag tank upstairs

 

- Lighting -

On all my sps tanks I have been most successful with all three types of light.* I prefer a more natural look and have been happy with 10k and 12k metal halide bulbs.* I like to give as much light as I possibly can since most sps I like can tolerate and do best in a very high amount of light.* The halides provide the main light source and 400w seem to give me the best coverage and intensity. I use t5s to fill in and give me a little more of a color I like over the tank especially when using lower kelvin bulbs.* I use leds along with these to give the corals a good florescent sheen and color to them.* No other light can give this look and I am desperately awaiting a better way to supplement more and better blue led light over my display.* Reefbrights are great but don't provide a lot of light.* So I use a combination of reefbrights and a strip with leds clustered tightly together. I stagger the leds with optics and no optics throughout this strip.* This is the last one I will use because they burn out and controllers go bad too often.* We will wait til someone makes a better powerful led strip and switch. I would love to use a led fixture to provide this light but I have not found one I like that will allow me to still have room for t5 bulbs. The light rack I use is jam packed! Right now I am using the following...

 

Main light source...

Two 400w se 12k reflux bulbs on lumatek ballasts set on hqi.* I modified two large square reflectors in order to run two metal halide bulbs side by side.* I cut one side of each reflector 4" short and rivited them back together in order to fit both reflectors over my 3' tank from front to back.* This leaves enough on the left and right side for supplemental lights and covers the tank front to back with light directly under a reflector.

 

Supplemental light...

Two 3' t5 bulbs over the right side and two 24" over the left side in order not to light my overflow.

We run two 2' reefbrights and one 36" led strip with 36 3w leds half with optics and half without.* All leds are blue and angled from the side in towards the center of the tank.* There are a total of 60 3w blue LEDs surrounding the tank.

 

- Filtration -

We run two large skimmers on this system. The skimmers are the main filtration but we use a few other methods to help reduce nitrates and phosphates including carbon sources, gfo and we run a "cryptic refuge".

 

We use a bubbleking 300 if I remember correctly, but the small red dragon pump is not working any longer.* This skimmer still rocks though and is ran by the old red dragon with the white round housing.**

The large main skimmer is a modified euro reef external skimmer which is 4' tall and 12" wide.* We have two of the large ehiem needle wheel pumps running and I have added three 3/4" mazzei injectors running on a closed loop.* I had three ehiems running but one failed and the other two need replacing too.* I need to find out what pump can replace these without any problems.* The skimmer would benefit from three new needlewheels pumps.

I clean the skimmer necks weekly by hand (nasty!) and flush the air intakes with tank water at the same time.* Every couple of months I will clean all the pumps.

 

- Carbon sources and rock tank -

We use three main carbon sources on this system.* Vodka, vinegar and aquaforrest -np pro.* Last time I checked we were dosing 150ml of -np pro, 50 ml of vinegar and 50 ml of vodka per day.* The vinegar and vodka are dosed in small doses with a reef dosing pump 24 hours a day and the -np pro is dosed 6 times a day in 25 ml shots.

All of these dosing lines run into a 40 breeder which is compleetly full of live rock which is covered in sponges and other good stuff, you could call it a cryptic refugium I guess. The only flow in this tank is from a 60 gallon zoanthid tank above it which drains into it before hitting the sump and the large euro reef skimmer which drains into it before the sump.* I will so change the drain on the zoanthid tank to go straight to the sump to get more flow through it.**

This tank really helps me dose a high amount of carbon sources without getting bacteria blooms or bacteria in the display tanks.* I can also raise the amount of carbon sources dosed fast if nutrients spike, without any problems.**

 

- Other filtration -

I have recently started running zeolites in a pump reactor which I am gradually working into my routine.* I am pumping the reactor 2 to 3 times a day as of now.* It's a large vertex reactor and it's running at full speed.* I probably need another liter or two and may get another reactor once the system is stable and used to running this one.* The avast magnetic ones interest me but space is a problem.

Gfo is run in a reactor on top of a couple inches of zeolites with no sponges because it cloggs in days.* I also use a filter sock on the end to catch particles and prevent gfo spills.* I use rox carbon and rowaphos and the carbon is ran passively. I used to regenerate my gfo but need to build a bigger new reactor to make this process more efficient and only have to run one batch each time.

 

- Sump tank -

The sump is a three sectioned simple sump.* First chamber is where all the returns from all the tanks enter the sump.* It is filled with small rock and a lot of white branching sponge.* It is very nasty with bacteria.* It slows down everything before it enters the middle section where the bubble king is and the gfo and carbon reactor is also in this section.* The last return section houses a zeolite reactor. It uses a reeflo barracuda gold hybrid return pump to feed the tanks and chiller.

 

- Aquaforrest prouducts -

I have been running AF for 6 months or more so far. I use the dropper bottles and i just squeeze the dropper all the way and squirt a full squirt twice for each bottle. Some I do three times.

 

Here is what I use now...

Coral B

Coral V

Coral E

Micro E

AF Amino Mix

Kalium

Iodum

Fluorine

Strontium

Pro Bio S

-NP Pro

Zeo Mix

 

 

- Dosing -

For now we are using bionic two part and dosing pumps to maintain water parameters. This kills me because I want to hook up my calcium reactor which is always my go too.* In a couple months I will switch over.* For now I am using two dosers to dose the following...

Alkalinity bionic

Calcium bionic

Magnesium kent tech m

-np pro aquaforrest

Home made potassium solution

Vodka*

Vinegar

 

- Fish feeding -

We feed our fish a huge variety of food and use a number of supplements which it's soaked in randomly.* We use everything from large krill to baby brine to pellets on feeders because of the large variety of fish we keep.* It will be easiest to take pictures of everything we feed later on than list them.* We use selcon, vitamin c, omegas, Amino's, and garlic when we soak the food.* We feed from large pressed packages of frozen and break off about 4 square inches and a number of cubes of frozen a day for feeding.* Along with multiple pellet feedings and nori daily.

 

- Corals -

We use a variety of amino mixes for the corals from zeo, red sea, kent, brightwells to aquaforrest.

We don't feed corals directly unless they are recovering from a stressful situation.* The fish provide more than enough nutrients for the corals to stay healthy.

If nitrates drop lower than one most of the time I add a little stump remover and things react well.* I try not to keep uln because we have so many different corals in other tanks connected to this system. With the amount of fish and food going in uln is basically impossible.

 

- Husbandry -

We do not do much to this tank besides clean the skimmers and pumps. Skimmer necks wiped weekly and pumps cleaned every 6 months.* We don't really clean the glass until it affects how well we can see the corals which is maybe every two weeks.* We let detritus settle and the large amount of critters in the tanks will usually inhabit it and create "a mulm" which turns to housing for sponge, bacteria, and all kinds of animals.* The only time we take detritus out is when it collects in low flow areas of the sump where no life is.* If it settles there it will usually get blown and create excess nutrients.*I will clean the rock tank a little maybe once a year to keep detritus from collecting too much on the rocks. Once I am running only the skimmer return through this tank I may not need to clean it.

 

- Fresh water and storage -

We use a tunze top off unit and a ten gallon top off tank.* One day when I hook up the huge apex system we got I will automate the refill on the top off container to make it more efficient.

The fresh water and water change tanks are two white water storage tanks, one is 100 gallons with a 50 gallon on top.* One drains into the other with a gate valve so I can use them both to mix saltwater and do 150 gallon water changes if need be, and also have two brute trashcans available to do 220 gallon changes in emergencies.*

The ro/di unit hangs on front of my water change tanks and has auto shut off and auto flush valves with a booster pump.* These really are they key to making water up quickly and not killing membranes and resin.* In the past forgetting about the filters has been the cause of a few tank issues.* Automating this as much as possible is very helpful.* Here is the order I run my filters...

5 micron

1 micron

Carbon

150 gph membrane

Two different di resin chambers*

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

A couple quick phone picks from a while back. I have since lowered phosphates and things are changing colors a bit. Once things stabilize from this and reaquascaping I will take some better and more pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

I spelled aquaforest wrong in the thread title, oh how embarrassing...

[miggs76]

Nice.  Im using aqua forest too.  I'm going to PM you a question.......

[DCReefer1964]

Me too. Welcome to the club Bro !!!

[monkiboy]

thanks for sharing paul, nice photos!

[Reefoholic]

Great info and pics! Thanks for sharing! Welcome to the club and eagerly waiting for more pics.

[DCReefer1964]

 

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[Reefoholic]

I shall be ready for some of the SPS frags that you would like to throw my way when my tank is ready in about couple of months

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Still no time to post nice macros pics but here are some phone shots. There a number of new corals in these shots that are just beginning to color up. The first pic is my favorite.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

[Reefoholic]

Great purples, greens and yellows! A feast for the eyes.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks, the yellows look very green in these pictures. Not sure why the camera on my phone makes them look like that. All the pics so far have been taken with phosphates fairly high too, around .15 or a little less average. I finally got things down to where they need to be but will need to continue to run gfo for a while to keep it there. Pretty sure the rocks soaked up a lot when the system went to H-E-double hockey sticks last year.

[monkiboy]

yellow corals + blue spectrum in light = green photos have you tried a yellow or orange filter? to help bring in the white balance to bring out the yellow you see?

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

No I haven't tried using any filters yet. Maybe turning off all the blue LEDs will be better when photographing the yellow corals. I have always thought using filters (especially with all blue leds on) makes a coral look like it has different colors than it actually has so i have avoided it. I may try using a filter just to get tank shots with the blue LEDs on just to play around.

[monkiboy]

it can, for sure. it's good to get a gel assortment pack and find the one that actually captures accurately what you see. or you can just set a custom white balance with a grey card or frag plug. shooting in RAW then post process with lightroom or similar makes this much easier, too, but more time consuming.

[Reefoholic]

or your there are apps in the App Store if you have an iPhone. You can add those filters later on too.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks guys, I don't have an iPhone so I may have to just use one of our good cameras from now on. I might get some gel filters just to play around, is there a certain place to get them?

[monkiboy]

folks get a lot of the gel packs but they seem to only last a few takes for me and get wrinkled and dirty quick so I prefer to use filters that screw onto to the lens made of glass and got mine from b&h photo. the quality of the photo is much nicer and easier to use.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Reefoholic]

I am drooling at my desk looking at these pictures.

[ezeke1]

I just started looking at the aquaforest products. Do you use the probiotic salt to go along with all that you're dosing and are you seeing a difference in coral colors?

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks Matt, I have just started trying to take photos so I don't have much experience. Hopefully things do well so I can continue to document the corals growth and color.

 

Ezeke1 I don't use the probiotic salt yet because I can't use all the salt in my mixing station and I don't want bacteria to turn sitting at the bottom. I may try and fix that though. I am not sure if dosing pro bio s is the same as what is in the probiotic salt either.

I haven't seen a dramatic change in color because I was already using metals and other stuff that AF uses. I was hoping to see a lighter brighter change in the acros from using the energy but I may be feeding enough to make that change hard to see. I have just got my nutrients down as well. So I suspect things will begin to change a little now. In the first pictures my phosphates were around .2 or .3 at times so I hope to get some better color and growth now that things stabilized. If I don't see much of a difference I would be surprised and disappointed. It will take some time though.

[ezeke1]

You're getting very nice pe with the corals and the color is getting there. Keep up the good work . I'm interested in seeing your tank progression with the AF products. Maybe I'll jump on board.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Thanks, colors have just begun to come out and things have just begun to start growing ok. I have a long way to go.